Sunday, April 26, 2015

Polling day is approaching and we are just matter of days
away from changing….well, actually changing nothing, if the truth is to be
told. Despite discontent with austerity and global capitalism, for people all
over the world an alternative has been difficult to imagine. One of the key
tasks of socialists is to provide a different vision of society where we do not
exist to serve the economy, but rather the economy exists to serve us, a
society where the slogan "from each according to their ability, to each
according to their needs" becomes a reality. As socialists we strive for a
society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and
instruments of production and distribution, by and in the interest of the whole
community. No party except the Socialist Party, no candidate in this election except
the Socialist Party candidates embraces that simple concept of a truly
democratic society. Our argument for engaging in the electoral process today is
that it provides as a platform for socialist ideas, the opportunity to speak to
people during election campaigns and to gain a somewhat limited access to the
media.

Workers vote for usual political parties every election
expecting it'll change things. But what have we ever gotten from them?
Everything stays the same. That's the definition of insanity. The outcome of
this election and whoever wins it, will not be able to resolve the world crisis
of capitalism, the truth is they are toothless. The question arises; what is
the most effective way to carry out this task? The capitalist electoral system may well be a
sham, a rigged system to ensure the domination of the tiny ruling class of
bankers and big-business owners. In the UK, two capitalist parties dominate
political life inside the system. Candidates from the Conservative and Labour
parties bask in the glow of the electoral contest. The contest, however, is
really one between two parties defending exploitation and representing the
extremely wealthy. The coming May elections will sorely disappoint anyone
longing for real change. Those who want a better life, a better world, an
immediate end to wars, better wages and conditions for workers will not get any
of those things from the pro-business candidates currently on offer. Given all
that, some people have asked why the Socialist Party are running candidates for
parliament. After all, the Socialist Party is not a party of professional
politicians. Its candidates have spent their lives fighting against war, racism
and the rest of the problems capitalism creates. The Socialist Party stands
because the general election is where the attention of workers will be focused
in May. Millions of workers vote in the election and those who do not directly
participate are forced to listen, because the media dwells on the elections
many months before they take place.

The Socialist Party’s entry into the 2015 general election
gives some people the opportunity to cast a vote against the system and for
socialism, instead of voting for a party that pays lip service to “the
interests of working people.” The hacks and mouthpieces of the capitalist media
cannot be the only voices speaking to people about the need for a “change.” The
Socialist Party campaign will get into debates; go door to door; and hold
public meetings and speak out to say that real change comes when working people
get organised and take action. The Socialist Party is running to satisfy a
growing hunger for revolutionary change and push it into the forefront of
electoral agenda. It is an opportunity for workers to declare their opposition
to the capitalist establishment and their corrupt representatives. We will take
the ideas of socialism—a better, more just society, the way forward for
humanity—to the people. Based on their performance over many decades, people
know by now what the major parties have to offer—more of the same. The
Socialist Party believes the deepening seriousness of the world’s problems
requires revolutionary ideas and revolutionary solutions. Only by opening up the
ballot to new ideas and new alternatives can the political process once more
become a weapon in the hands of a people struggling to solve the problems they
face. Votes are a clue to the strength of political ideas.

Socialism isn't a utopian dream. It is a part of the real
world and the struggle for it is in progress. While capitalism may have been discredited
itself, the socialist alternative is less obvious to most people. Socialism has
been tried and failed, we are told. The legacy of the old Soviet Union has been
a tremendous burden for the socialist movement. Lenin’s ‘communism’ has money,
banks, armies, police, prisons, social stratification but socialism’s aim is to
surpass the need for the use of money. Police, prisons and the military would
no longer be necessary when goods, services, healthcare, and education are
available to all people. Lenin turned socialism upside down creating an
Orwellian nightmare where a so-called ‘workers state’ oppressed and exploited
the workers and dissidents were condemned to the gulags and salt mines of
Siberia. The State owns the industries, but the bureaucracy absolutely controls
the State. This enables the bureaucracy, while paying lip service to
"Socialism," to use the State-owned industries to exploit the
property-less workers and to enjoy disproportionately the fruits of their
labor. The Soviet bureaucrats were constantly striving, not merely for more
production, but, with their own bureaucratic interests in mind, for more
profits. It was by making more profits for his factory that the Soviet manager
got bonuses for himself. The class struggle existed in Soviet Russia, but it
was camouflaged by a variety of devices, including the trade unions, which were
kept under strict bureaucratic control, and by the judicious use of modest
concessions not unlike those used by U.S. capitalists to insure themselves long
periods of strike-free operation. The Russian workers lived from pay-day to
pay-day, just as wage slaves always do. The big incomes of the privileged
bureaucrats can only come out if surplus value produced by labor. This is what
enabled the top bureaucrats to live like capitalist plutocrats. Yet the vision
of a socialist future is so powerful that it has withstood these distortions.
It prevails because we desperately need an alternative to the capitalist
system, which is killing the planet and its people: socialism is that
alternative.

Despite many reasons for
cynicism, there are grounds to be hopeful. So raise the red banner of socialism
and champion the cause of the working class. Vote The Socialist Party. Our
vision is of a world in which the weapons of warfare have been transformed into
the proverbial plough-shares of peace and prosperity. This is a socialist vision
of a society guided by the deepest values of human solidarity, equality and
concern for others, one that values the community over private profit. People
are standing up to their governments with hope of reconstructing a future which
provides equal and harmonious living standards for all. If we truly want
drastic and sustainable social change, all the protest marchers, placard-wavers
and social media activists must join together to destroy the old system.